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Weather and climate on Mars

Nature volume 412, pages 245–249 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Imagine a planet very much like the Earth, with similar size, rotation rate and inclination of rotation axis, possessing an atmosphere and a solid surface, but lacking oceans and dense clouds of liquid water. We might expect such a desert planet to be dominated by large variations in day–night and winter–summer weather. Dust storms would be common. Observations and simulations of martian climate confirm these expectations and provide a wealth of detail that can help resolve problems of climate evolution.

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Figure 1: Mars atmosphere temperature profiles measured by Viking5 compared with the standard atmosphere profile for Earth.
Figure 2: Cross-sections of zonal mean temperature and zonal wind for northern-hemisphere winter solstice (Ls=270°) from MGS-TES observations.
Figure 3: Zonal mean general circulation components from the GCM of Haberle et al.14.
Figure 4: Local-to-regional dust storms observed by Cantor et al.43.
Figure 5: Temperature and dust opacity versus latitude and seasonal index (Ls) as inferred from MGS-TES by Smith et al.9.

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Acknowledgements

I thank M. Smith for making available Figs 2 and 5, and B. Cantor for making available Fig. 4.

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  1. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Box 351640, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, Washington, USA

    Conway Leovy

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Leovy, C. Weather and climate on Mars. Nature 412, 245–249 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35084192

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